Calculated bets : computers, gambling, and mathematical modeling to win

Cover......Page 1
Half-title......Page 3
Series-title......Page 5
Title......Page 7
Copyright......Page 8
Dedication......Page 9
CONTENTS......Page 11
PREFACE......Page 13
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS......Page 17
CHAPTER ONE THE MAKING OF A GAMBLER......Page 19
CHAPTER TWO WHAT IS JAI ALAI?......Page 24
EQUIPMENT......Page 25
STRATEGY......Page 28
THE BASQUES......Page 32
JAI ALAI IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY......Page 33
JAI ALAI IN THE UNITED STATES......Page 35
NORTH AMERICAN FRONTONS......Page 36
THE PLAYERS......Page 38
BETTING ON JAI ALAI......Page 43
The Spectacular Seven Scoring System......Page 45
But Isn’t It Fixed?......Page 48
Other Betting Systems......Page 51
I Was a High School Bookie......Page 58
Even crude mathematical models can have real predictive power.......Page 60
Back to Jai Alai......Page 62
Monte Carlo Simulations......Page 63
Building the Simulation......Page 66
Breaking Ties......Page 67
Simulation Results......Page 69
Generating Random Numbers......Page 76
Passing Paper......Page 79
Perfect Evaluation......Page 83
CHAPTER FOUR THE IMPACT OF THE INTERNET......Page 86
The Coming of the Web......Page 87
Parsing......Page 89
Languages of the Internet: Perl and HTML......Page 95
Why Real Programmers Hate Microsoft......Page 99
CHAPTER FIVE IS THIS BUM ANY GOOD?......Page 103
Probability versus Statistics......Page 104
Jai Alai Players and Baseball Players......Page 105
Estimating Player Skill from Statistics......Page 110
The Beauty of Curves......Page 113
How Often Does X Beat Y?......Page 119
The Hot-Hand Phenomenon......Page 122
Correlation versus Causation......Page 123
What’s the Result?......Page 125
CHAPTER SIX MODELING THE PAYOFFS......Page 127
Pari-Mutuel Wagering......Page 128
Estimating the Payoffs......Page 131
Gambling and the Stock Market......Page 137
Measuring Our Impact on the Pool......Page 148
Field Trip to Connecticut......Page 150
The Problem of Overfitting Data......Page 154
Mathematical Modeling Techniques......Page 157
CURVE-FITTING MODELS......Page 161
NEAREST NEIGHBOR PREDICTORS......Page 162
SYSTEMS OF EQUATIONS......Page 163
DIFFERENTIAL EQUATION MODELS......Page 164
NEURAL NETWORKS......Page 165
CHAPTER SEVEN ENGINEERING THE SYSTEM......Page 168
Elegance in Software Systems......Page 169
Smoking Out Bugs......Page 173
The Millennium Bug......Page 175
Program Trading in Jai Alai......Page 177
The Jai Alai Maven......Page 179
On the Wire......Page 180
Otto the Autodialer......Page 183
Cryptography and Security......Page 187
Internet Gambling......Page 189
A Gambler’s Diary......Page 192
Epilogue......Page 200
CHAPTER NINE HOW SHOULD YOU BET?......Page 205
Having Fun Betting on Jai Alai......Page 206
The Best Bets in Jai Alai......Page 208
Rating the Players......Page 223
Using the Odds Board......Page 224
Gambling......Page 227
Sports and Games......Page 229
People Prediction......Page 230
Financial Modeling......Page 231
Scientific Forecasting......Page 232
GLOSSARY......Page 233
ARTICLES ON JAI ALAI......Page 237
SPORTS, GAMBLING, AND PREDICTION......Page 238
INDEX......Page 241